Piers Akerman

Piers Akerman
–,
Monday,
October,
31,
2011,(4:49am)

The claim by Prime Minister Julia Gillard and senior ministers to have been caught by surprise by the decision by Qantas CEO Alan Joyce to ground his fleet Saturday is either a confirmation of this Labor government’s total incompetence or a bare-faced lie.
This government has form either way.
It lies and it is incompetent.

Piers Akerman
–,
Saturday,
October,
29,
2011,(8:20pm)

Just over a year ago Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she would rather be watching children learn to read than attending diplomatic talks.
Body

Whoops! That was before her personal popularity tanked and her government’s polling sank through the basement floor.

Now her spin merchants are trying to position her as the Margaret Thatcher of our times, a strong decisive leader at home and abroad.

The only similarity is that both had handbags.

CHOGM, say some of the Labor cheer squad in Canberra, has thrown Gillard a lifeline. There are a number of flaws in this optimistic vision, least of all Gillard’s self-confessed apathy toward foreign affairs.

In our immediate region, Gillard is seen as a complete joke. Think no further than her short-lived claim to have negotiated an asylum seeker deal with East Timor last year.

After grandiosely announcing her plan in October it emerged that she had only spoken to East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta and not with Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, who would have been responsible for selling the spur-of-the-moment notion to his nation.

The thought bubble didn’t fly. As she ignominiously backed down Gillard claimed that East Timor was not the only nation with which she was talking. Papua New Guinea was also in the frame to provide an offshore processing centre, she claimed, hinting that Manus Island could be used.

That was until then PNG Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Abal said his government’s position was that Manus Island would not be recommissioned.

Which left the hapless Gillard reaching out to Malaysia with her absolutely ludicrous catch-and-release scheme whereby Australia would accept 4000 genuine refugees after shipping just 800 boat people to Malaysia.

The High Court effectively scuttled that one with its decision on an appeal launched by refugee advocates. Some jurists see the court’s bar on Malaysia as an outrageous over-reach by the justices, while others see it as a reflection of the responsibilities of the immigration minister as laid out in the Migration Act.

Be that as it may, in the mere nomination of Malaysia as a possible recipient of undocumented people smuggler clients Gillard again exhibited the underlying hypocrisy endemic to Labor’s ham-fisted approach to government.

Prior to announcing the stillborn Malaysia Solution, Gillard had taken the not unreasonable position that she would not send asylum seekers to nations that had not signed the UN Refugee Convention.

This claim to principle was a reaction against the successful Howard government policy under which asylum seekers were sent to Nauru, which was then not a signatory to the convention.

Under the Howard government, the high-risk people smuggler trade stopped but Labor’s ideological hatred of all things conservative made Nauru an impossible solution to accept. Nauru has now become a signatory to the convention but that does not alter things as far as Labor is concerned.

While standing on principle as far as Nauru went, Gillard was prepared to ditch principle when it came to Malaysia, and she has also dumped the Australian-initiated APEC as the preferred regional institution, opting for the new East Asian Summit.

The absence of India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from CHOGM this week highlighted another black spot in Labor’s diplomatic record brought on by its hypocrisy. Singh is not here because Kevin Rudd, who prided himself on both principle and his foreign policy credentials, reversed the Howard government’s decision to sell uranium to India.

Rather stupidly, Rudd said last week that India was able to source its uranium elsewhere. This is a slap in the face for those trying to develop new markets for Australian uranium.

Labor bases its opposition to uranium sales to India on India’s refusal to sign the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ignoring the reality that India has signed safeguard agreements, acceptable to both Canada and the US, under which it guarantees the purchases will be used only for the civil nuclear energy sector.

The hypocrisy here is monstrous. Australia sells yellowcake to China, which was the source country for the fissile material used by the North Koreans and the Pakistanis to develop their nuclear armouries.

The Rudd ban on India, supported by Gillard, is no more than a sop to Labor’s Left and has created a running sore in our relations with the largest English-speaking democracy in the world, the globe’s third-largest economy and a nation with which it is in our best interests to establish closer trade and diplomatic ties.

CHOGM reminds us of some of the common heritage the former British colonies enjoy. The Queen is a symbol of these ties but as an international forum it is largely irrelevant. Nations which don’t play by the rules, like Zimbabwe and Fiji, don’t attend and demonstrate they don’t need to.

Next month, US President Barack Obama will briefly visit Australia for a photo opportunity with Gillard, which she hopes will give her the same sort of bounce in the ratings as the Queen’s short stay.

It probably will but there is no doubt that it will also serve to remind many Australians that Obama has dumped his carbon cap-and-trading scheme, leaving Gillard and her government isolated.

The latest polls show that Obama is probably a one-term president, even though no Republican presidential candidate has yet emerged.

Next month Gillard will attend the G20 leaders meeting in Cannes.

She and Treasurer Wayne Swan have already lectured Europe on its debt problem.

If foreign affairs are Gillard’s best hope, she should save us all the cost of her international air travel and stay at home. No one could possibly take this embarrassment on the world stage seriously.

Piers Akerman
–,
Thursday,
October,
27,
2011,(5:43pm)

AS the Queen set the gold standard for model behaviour on her brief Australian visit, federal Labor minister Anthony Albanese presented a very personal example of the kind of manners that drag down the nation’s reputation.

Piers Akerman
–,
Thursday,
October,
27,
2011,(4:23am)

Kevin Rudd’s 2007 election promise to provide every school pupil with a computer has still not been delivered and where it has, it has cost plenty.
Parents are finding that if their children are lucky enough to get a laptop under the program, they may incur extra charges that neither Rudd nor the then Education Minister, Julia Gillard, mentioned.

Piers Akerman
–,
Wednesday,
October,
26,
2011,(4:23am)

The smelly unwashed Occupy Sydney rabble were moved by police out of Martin Place with barely a whimper.
The only squeal came from Lord Mayor Clover Moore who was offended that the State government had taken lawful action against the group who were clearly defying posted city ordinances against loitering and camping.

Piers Akerman
–,
Thursday,
October,
20,
2011,(4:08am)

Prime Minister Julia Gillard had union boss Paul Howes and assorted ALP and union officials to dinner Tuesday at Kirribili House, my colleague Simon Benson reports in The Daily Telegraph.
Howes, the head of the AWU, came sharply into focus last year when he stupidly appeared on national television claiming he had a role in the political assassination of the sitting prime minister, Kevin Rudd.

Piers Akerman
–,
Wednesday,
October,
19,
2011,(4:20am)

Swapping 1027 Palestinian criminals for 1 Israeli soldier might not represent great value for the Israelis at first glance but then the Palestinians are receiving the scum of the earth and the Israelis are righting a wrong.
Again, the Palestinians do not place much value on human life, let alone the lives of their own citizens.

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Piers has been one of The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph's best-read columnists since 1993. One of the nation's most respected journalists he has worked in New York, London, Washington and Los Angeles.